


Parent-Teacher Conference

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-23 18:49:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17688929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Hilda wants Zelda to help with Sabrina’s mortal education.





	1. Chapter 1

Sabrina has a C.

Sabrina has never had a C before.

Hilda is worried.

Zelda thinks it is natural.

xxx

Zelda had not been great in school. She had focused on the social dynamics, had honed those social dynamics, had fucked her way through plenty of social dynamics. She wasn’t stupid academically, but she knew when to pretend to be.

Hilda had been great in school. She had focused on those particular dynamics, had honed dynamics that would charm her teachers, had talked her way through many professors. She wasn’t stupid with her own social group, but she knew when to pretend to be.

xxx

It’s mid-semester, and Sabrina still has a C.

Hilda has tried to refocus her niece, encourage, tutor, encourage tutoring. 

But there’s the C, regardless.

Hilda has tried to cajole her sister into refocusing their niece. But there’s the C, regardless.

It’s time for better cajoling.

xxx

Zelda is lying in bed, reading the dark scriptures.

Hilda enters from the bathroom. She’s tied her robe loosely. She pretends not to notice Zelda noticing her and the black silk panties just barely visible beneath the heavy cotton robe.

“Parent-teacher conferences are next Wednesday,” Hilda says as she lays herself out atop her comforter, the robe falling open further.

Zelda glances once, twice, and then says,

“How exciting for you.” She rolls her eyes, but it’s an afterthought, designed to make her seem uninterested. Hilda watches Zelda closely, absorbs her, understands her, says,

“Oh very. That principal is so dreamy.” No response from Zelda. “And Miss Wardwell. Her fingers are so—” Zelda responds then, becomes rigid, says,

“What do her fingers have to do with teaching grammar?”

“Good penmanship?” Hilda says, but she already knows she’s about to win this round as Zelda places her unholy bible on the nightstand and says,

“And what does—that—have to do with teaching grammar?”

“Perhaps you should ask her yourself,” Hilda says. She takes off the robe, and Zelda watches. She slides beneath her covers, and Zelda watches. “Parent-teacher conferences are next Wednesday.”

“Hmm,” Zelda says as she switches off the lamp.

They both do not fall asleep. They listen to each other in the dark instead.

xxx

“Parent-teacher conferences are day after tomorrow,” Hilda says over bacon and eggs and wheat toast. She’s wearing a cardigan over a belted shirt dress. It’s completely regular but yet not.

Zelda looks at her, hums. She takes up her newspaper but very clearly isn’t reading it.

“I know that’s usually my bag,” Hilda says.

“Yes, it is,” Zelda says.

“But I’d like you to accompany me. This time,” Hilda says.

“And why should I?” Zelda says.

Hilda removes the cardigan, ostensibly because the frying pan is so hot. Zelda watches, ostensibly to ascertain whether her home will catch fire.

“You have a vested interest in our niece’s education,” Hilda says.

“I do, do I?” Zelda says.

Hilda rolls up her sleeves, unbuttons her top button. Zelda still watches, doesn’t have any ostensible reason to do so, turns her unseeing eyes back to the paper.

“Forgive my presumption, then,” Hilda says knowingly.

xxx

“Parent-teacher conferences are tomorrow,” Hilda says as she clips tendrils of ivy.

Zelda is sitting on the porch, smoking.

“Of course they are,” Zelda says, feigning disinterest. But she’s only got the one prop, and it’s too small to adequately hide behind.

“Have you given any thought to my proposition?” Hilda says, moving a little too casually to a rose bush.

“I’d hardly call it a proposition.” Hilda hears something in the tone and tries not to perk up so much as to reveal herself. “You haven’t offered me anything in exchange.” 

Hilda looks up, gains eye contact, says sweetly,

“Haven’t I?”

Zelda stubs out her cigarette in a potted mum and huffs inside.

She’s reaching for the box of non-latex gloves so she can go poke at a dead body for a bit when Hilda’s breath is suddenly on her neck.

“I brought the pruning shears in,” Hilda says. Zelda doesn’t turn. “I know that’s a particular favorite of yours.” Zelda does turn then, fast and halfway angry. 

“That’s what you think I want?” Zelda says, expecting fear, confusion, perhaps even recalcitrance. She sees, instead, elation.

“Had to be sure, love,” Hilda says, still smiling. Zelda is fully angry now. She slaps the pruning shears out of Hilda’s hand and shoves her into the wall. Oh now here’s the fear and confusion. Zelda relishes those and takes a step closer. 

“How sure are you now?” Zelda says, trapping Hilda with her body. Hilda’s eyes flit to the taut forearms confining her, to the pruning shears on the hardwood, to the rotary phone in the hall recess, back to Zelda’s blazing eyes.

“Six to one half dozen to the other,” Hilda says, stronger than she feels.

Zelda’s elbows bend. And now her face is so much closer to Hilda’s.

“You know I hate it when you use mortal colloquialisms,” Zelda says, her breath brushing Hilda’s lips. Hilda reels for a moment and then remembers her aim, steadies herself.

“Oh get fucked, Zelds.” Hilda uses her own forearms to break free. She doesn’t take the time to enjoy her sister’s expression as she takes the stairs two at a time.

“Parent-teacher conferences are tomorrow,” Zelda’s voice says at least six stairs behind.

When they meet again at the vanity, looking at each other’s reflections in the mirror, they’re both physically and emotionally tired.

“You know very well what I’m offering,” Hilda says finally.

“Prove it,” Zelda says.

They’re still looking at each other in the mirror. Reflections. Opposites. What should be rather than what is.

“Why should the onus be on me?” Hilda says.

“You’re the impetus. You’re always the impetus,” Zelda says behind her, at her shoulder.

“Oh get fucked, Zelds.”

“I intend to,” Zelda says. Hilda blinks and then turns.

“So you have given thought to my proposition.”

“Finally,” Zelda sighs. “Finally you’ve offered me something in exchange.” Zelda slumps onto her bed, but now Hilda is the one halfway angry.

“I’ve always offered you everything! But you were always too selfish and stupid to recognize it!” Hilda paces, and Zelda opens her eyes, looks, sees, recognizes, finally understands.

“Punish me, then,” Zelda says.

“Absolutely not,” Hilda says. “You’d enjoy that too much.”

“You’re right, of course,” Zelda says. “You’re always right.”

“Of course I am,” Hilda says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fill for together-as-sisters on tumblr.


	2. Chapter 2

After a tense, silent dinner, in which Sabrina had mentioned parent-teacher conferences at the outset, and no one had said anything else at all, Hilda and Zelda are doing a puzzle alone in the parlor.

Well, Hilda is doing a puzzle, and Zelda is three pretty stiff bourbons and a half dozen cigarettes in, staring at her.

The needle on the record player zips up, and for a second they listen to the declining rotation of the finished record, and then Zelda says,

“I’m going to need collateral.”

Hilda deliberately does not look up from a bunch of probably clouds—blue and white, white and blue, grey, gray, grey—she’s starting to get frustrated with.

“Hmm?” Hilda says.

Zelda lights a cigarette, begins to pace. But it’s not nervous or anxious or even angry. It’s opening-argument pacing. An elegant, slightly tipsy prosecutor:

“You’ll recall Argentina, 1948.”

Hilda does look up then.

“Could’ve done without the Nazi expats. But lovely other than that,” Hilda says.

“You’ll recall a deal we made in the spring of that year, in that country.”

Hilda blushes, says,

“You cheated, so I reneged.” 

Zelda opens her mouth for a rebuttal but then shuts it, remembers her line of argument, squares her shoulders.

“You’ll recall St. Petersburg, 1921. It was Petrograd at that time.” She pauses for Hilda to add,

“Very much the same story, that.” Zelda presses on,

“You’ll recall Yorkshire, 1856.”

“I had typhus!” 

Zelda scoffs and then,

“The particular details are irrelevant. The facts remain: I won a bet, and you are to this day delinquent in payment. On at least three discrete occasions.”

Hilda this time opens her mouth for a rebuttal, but Zelda cuts a glance at her, and she shuts it. Zelda continues:

“There is no guarantee my—still very hypothetical at this point—appearance at this parent-teacher conference would ensure any improvement in our niece’s grade, which, for the record, is not a bad grade, merely mediocre, and what does it matter if she is mediocre in mortal academia, which will count for less and less as she matures in the dark arts, and—Satan forbid—barring that, many mortals themselves excel in life after their uninspired high school careers? But I digress. If I subject myself to this putrid event, and you do not deem my involvement enthusiastic or thoughtful or sycophantic enough, I suspect—because of your previous repeated, flagrant, and egregious disregard for verbal agreements—that you will again withhold payment. You’ve established a pattern of behavior, Hildegard Antoinette Spellman, and to quote the great warlock poet Pete Townshend, I won't get fooled again.”

Zelda downs the rest of her bourbon, throws her cigarette butt into the fireplace, glares.

Hilda sits there, staring back, open-mouthed. 

Her mind swirls with the incidents cited, remembering them slightly differently, but the evidence is no less damning. It’s no less damning for her admittedly spotty adherence to handshake contracts. But it’s much more damning for Zelda’s desire, in Hilda’s estimation anyway.

Hilda had previously thought Zelda’s lust was simply indiscriminate, and she had used that misinformation to her own benefit. 

But this recitation of grievances shows her something, whispers in her ear. She could use the pruning shears on herself when she realizes her panties are wet at the thought.

Hilda pours herself a glass and downs it. She returns the tumbler to the coffee table and sits up very straight, says,

“And what would you consider adequate compensation?”

Zelda laughs.

“We do not have enough time this evening to discuss your deficit or reparations. I’m requesting a security deposit.”

Hilda pours and swallows and replaces again.

“What if I could kill two birds with one stone?” Hilda says. Zelda’s face darkens.

“Of all the mortal idiot cliches I’ve ever heard you say, that is by far the least sexy, and I definitely won’t be bargaining with you further if you continue in this vein.”

But Zelda trembles slightly as she’s pouring herself another. And Hilda notices, of course.

“Nonsense,” Hilda says. “You hate ‘head ‘em off at the pass’ more than you hate the false god.” Before Zelda can pretend to be indignant and pretend to end the conversation, Hilda has crossed to the record player, is shuffling around on the shelf next to it. “1948… Hmm…” She picks a record, places it carefully, aligns the needle just so. “You liked Peggy Lee back then.” Strings and keys, mellow in a way only 78 rpms can convey perfectly. “But you’ve always had a soft spot for stout blondes.”

“Stout bottle blondes,” Zelda says, but even she realizes it’s not as cutting a remark as she would’ve liked.

Hilda stays at the record player and sways to the music.

“I left a note on his dresser,” Peggy Lee sings.

Hilda sways more and now removes her sweater, in time, drops it dramatically. Her deft, domestic hands move to the zipper at the back of her neck. She inches the zipper down.

“With these few goodbye words,” Peggy Lee sings.

Hilda turns, focuses her eyes on Zelda’s nightcap so she doesn’t have to focus on eyes or mouth. Hilda’s hands cradle the limp dress and help it down her front to pool on the rug.

“This is what you wanted in Argentina, 1948, yeah?” Hilda whispers.

Zelda is sitting on the edge of the desk and veritably panting.

“Yes,” Zelda says unthinkingly. But then she does think and amends: “This is what you already owe me. This is not a security deposit.”

Hilda discontinues her striptease, stands there in her underclothes and nylons.

“Don’t look for me,” Peggy Lee sings. Hilda snatches the needle up—she’d always preferred Dinah Shore anyway—and gets right in Zelda’s face.

“Parent-teacher conferences are tomorrow. What do you want from me tonight?” Hilda says.

Zelda smirks in the firelight.

“Just what I deserve,” Zelda says.

Hilda retreats, spits,

“Oh get fucked, Zelds!”

“You say that,” Zelda says. “But do you ever mean it?”

Hilda is angry but looks down at her own half-clothed form.

“You’re right, of course,” Hilda says.

“Of course I am,” Zelda says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have previously let Hilda rant. And now Zelda gets to.


	3. Chapter 3

Zelda’s still perched on the edge of the desk, and Hilda is still standing in front of her, still in dishabille.

“Are you ready to negotiate, then?” Zelda says as she carefully sets down her drink, grips the edge of the desk, expects a no—some charming technicality, some very sweet and considerate derailment that will sit in her psyche neutrally for weeks until it hurts her enough some three am that she’ll wake up in the morning and find a reason for murder. A pitiful and unpleasant and unhealthy and torturous release, but a release nevertheless.

“Yes,” Hilda says. “But may I put my clothes on first?” Perhaps Zelda is drunker than she’d thought, because before she can stop herself, she says,

“No. I like that you stopped wearing slips.”

Hilda blushes.

“In point of fact, I have not stopped wearing slips. I simply no longer typically wear anything that requires a slip for modesty or comfort. If I were to—” Zelda places her hand—chilled and slick from holding her glass—on Hilda’s bare midriff, and Hilda jumps, immediately has goosebumps.

“Accept the compliment,” Zelda says, her fingers gliding around to Hilda’s lower back, gently applying pressure so Hilda will inch closer. Zelda parts her knees, and Hilda takes a half step. They’re touching just at fingers and lumbar, but they’re breathing on each other.

“Ok,” Hilda says. She takes another half step. “But what do you want?”

Zelda’s fingers push again, and Hilda feels the tweed of Zelda’s skirt on her own naked thighs. Zelda swallows, and Hilda watches her throat pulse under her lace collar.

“I—um.” She clears her throat, pretending that’s what her um had been. Either way it’s admitting weakness, and she hates herself for it, and Hilda loves her for it.

Zelda removes her hand from smooth flesh, returns it to smooth wood, steels herself: 

“Two things. First, I will pick what you wear tomorrow.” Hilda jams her hands onto her hips and takes a few angry paces away.

“Well, now I know the second thing will be ridiculous! What absolute monstrosity will you have me wear, pray tell? I should’ve known this was a losing game. I should’ve—”

“Yes, you should’ve plenty of things, but you didn’t, and now here we are, and I want you to play with my hair as I fall asleep in your lap!” Hilda is arrested in her circuit of the room.

“Excuse me, what?”

“I didn’t stutter!”

Hilda is torn. This could be an elaborate ruse. This could be genuine. This definitely is something, an alarming something, regardless of motive. She goes on the offense:

“And I suppose you’ll want me done up like some dominatrix as I do so?!”

“Terry cloth robe! And you’ll be reading to me, in your soft, lilting voice!”

Hilda trips over her discarded clothes, bangs her shin on the coffee table which sends several puzzle pieces careening, stumbles onto the settee. She’s off balance physically and emotionally and grasping at straws:

“From 120 Days of Sodom, I’m sure!”

Zelda has finally stood up from the desk, is stalking toward the settee, eyes wild.

“The last chapter of Jane Eyre!”

The way Zelda looks in her severe skirt suit, advancing and advancing, blazing and aggressive, Hilda sinks back against a cushion and closes her eyes. She’s ready to be bludgeoned or strangled, but a hand is in hers, nails scratching and searching, muscles flexing, possessive, and when she opens her eyes, not dead, to her own room, she has nothing to say. Nothing she can name or cry out. But Zelda looks the same, the same blazing, as she says,

“I changed my mind.” Zelda snaps her fingers, and Peggy Lee is singing again from somewhere. Zelda sits heavily on her own bed. “Take off your clothes.”

Hilda freezes. She thinks it was all an elaborate ruse after all, is about to tell Zelda exactly where to shove it all. But then the blaze blazes out of Zelda’s eyes somewhat as she takes in Hilda’s body language.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Zelda says. “I changed my mind about—” her expression is pained. She scoffs at herself, “—two birds with one stone.” It’s as if it tastes bad in her mouth, but she elucidates for Hilda’s benefit: “Ideally you are nude beneath the terry cloth robe, and you already owe me this, so.”

Hilda stands in between their beds, in her underclothes, in her goosebumps, in her ignorance and suspicion and foreboding. She culls confidence from the part of her that knows. She culls confidence from the half blazing look in Zelda’s eyes. 

Hilda snaps her fingers, and Dinah Shore is singing,

“The moon belongs to everyone.”

And Hilda is swaying to the music. She is 78 rpm, and so is Dinah Shore, far away but still mellow and sexy alto crooning. Stout blondes singing into a void.

Hilda detaches her left stocking from her antique and well cared for but utilitarian garter belt, runs her hand up to her hip flexor deliberately. Rolls the ancient stocking down from the top to the bottom, slips out of her modern ballet flat and then follows with her hands. She crumples the stocking in her hands in a calibrated show and tosses it. (She mentally catalogues where it lands.)

Zelda is a rapt audience. She’s seen plenty of people naked. But seeing Hilda become so. For her. It’s almost too much, and she’s fisting her duvet.

“And love can come to everyone,” Dinah sings.

Hilda does the right stocking. She reaches around for the clasps of her bra. Zelda can’t look or she’ll pounce. When she looks again, Hilda is sliding out of her panties, her mouth pouty and questioning.

Zelda snaps her fingers, and Dinah is silenced, a terry cloth robe is laid out on Hilda’s bed. Hilda doesn’t even look at it before she dons it.

xxx

Hilda is still suspicious.

Zelda still has her doubts.

xxx

“‘Reader, I married him,’” Hilda’s soft, lilting voice says, her hands threading through Zelda’s hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. We all very well know Zelda is a bottom. But my theory is that she actually prefers very vanilla sexy things.


	4. Chapter 4

Hilda wakes up so hot. She hates sleeping in a robe, and she has forgotten how much body heat Zelda produces as she sleeps. It’s been a long time, after all, since they were kids gossiping together, huddling together for warmth and intimacy.

It isn’t dawn yet, and she’s weighing her options about which overly hot thing she can safely remove. She decides the robe is her best bet: Zelda might feel cheated waking up alone and ultimately decide against conferences, and she will have done—well, nothing particularly embarrassing or humiliating or uncomfortable. But for nothing, nonetheless. At this point it’s the principle of it. It’s precarious. But it’s the path they’ve somehow chosen or fallen upon.

She tilts, wiggles, shrugs out half a shoulder, and Zelda’s breath quickens on her neck:

“What are you doing?” Hilda could swear the voice sounds frightened.

“I’m burning. You don’t feel that I’m burning?” 

Zelda’s arm is slung over her and half inside the robe, and she splays her fingers out over Hilda’s ribs.

“Hmm. I suppose you are.”

They lay still together for a long moment.

“You’re either going to have to get off me or let me out of this furnace of a robe.”

Another beat goes by.

“I’m not quite awake, so I want to be sure I’ve understood this correctly: one of my options is to continue sleeping in this bed with you as you are completely nude and I am in a very thin satin slip?”

“You’ve understood correctly,” Hilda says.

The breath on Hilda’s neck is hot and damp and faster now. Zelda slides out of the bed without pulling back the covers.

“I don’t know if you’re bluffing or attributing to me self-control I don’t have,” Zelda says as she climbs into her own bed.

Zelda drifts back into sleep. She’s lived with this and that and this again for so long that it’s white noise to her—until it isn’t, of course, and she must kill or be killed.

But Hilda’s understanding is new. Not even new but burgeoning, incipient.

Hilda stares at the ceiling and sweats and wonders.

xxx

Hilda drags her aching carcass out of bed and showers just as the sun creeps over the horizon.

She doesn’t know what outfit looms in her future, so she puts on a light cotton robe, does nothing to her hair. She’s still just so hot. And she knows the baking she’s about to do to steady herself will result only in more heat.

She’s finished a batch of cherry turnovers and a half dozen pumpkin muffins, and a seafood quiche is in the oven before anyone else descends the stairs.

Sabrina first. Then Ambrose. They both choose the turnovers and leave without a lot of talking. When Hilda’s offering three baked goods as breakfast options it’s either a holiday or a bad day, and today is certainly not a holiday.

Zelda finally appears, perfectly her regular self in an eggplant dress, chiffon overlay, long sleeves, plum lipstick. She sits rather stiffly.

Hilda doesn’t ask, knows she wants the quiche, plates it.

Zelda takes two bites, says without looking at Hilda,

“Your clothes are hanging on our doorframe.”

Hilda swallows the last of her muffin, swallows the last of her tea.

Zelda continues eating, pretends to read a newspaper, but Hilda knows the page she’s chosen is all coupons.

xxx

Hilda had thought initially it would’ve been something terrible like her mime get up from several decades previous when she’d wanted a challenging new hobby. But after the Jane Eyre incident, she’d reconsidered and thought maybe it’d be just her regular clothes but arranged in a Zelda style. But no.

Zelda is at their office desk perusing documents when Hilda walks in and says,

“In what universe does a spinster aunt with shared guardianship over her niece with another spinster aunt show up to parent-teacher conferences in a silver glittery cocktail dress?”

Zelda looks up to peruse Hilda instead. Hilda is indeed in a sleeveless silver glittery cocktail dress, ruching to the left to help create a line, beading at the boatneck to accentuate collarbones.

“A beneficent universe,” Zelda says.

Hilda blushes, runs her hands down the outsides of her thighs. It’s not the kind of dress that necessitates this kind of cajoling to lay right. It lays right already. But Hilda isn’t used to it and nervous. She tries to cover that:

“Fine. Get in the car.”

xxx

The A and B classes are easy.

The C class is a lot of “she’s bright but talks too much” and “can be disruptive” and “late and disengaged.” 

It’s ultimately Zelda’s detached logic that convinces the philosophy teacher to grant extra-credit opportunities. 

Soon after her victory she excuses herself to powder her nose.

But Hilda knows good and well that Zelda charms her powder to last. Hilda follows her to the ladies’ room, curious, suspicious. 

Zelda has already scouted the location, lunges to lock the door, throws Hilda onto the counter, plunges her tongue into Hilda’s mouth.

Zelda sighs into the kiss, but Hilda’s hands are at her shoulders, pushing her gently away.

“You’ll be satisfied with a quickie in a high school loo?” Hilda says.

Zelda does not retreat.

“I’ve learned from experience. I’ve got to take it when I can get it.”


	5. Chapter 5

Zelda is done waiting and hoping and engaging and being duped. Hilda keeps writing these checks she has no intention of cashing (And Satan alive, she’s picked up a few of these mortal cliches Hilda loves). But the fact that Hilda keeps writing these checks in the first place frustrates Zelda more than anything else about the situation.

She can accept wanting someone she shouldn’t or can’t have. She can accept that that person is her ridiculous sister. Fine. It’s a touch vile, a touch demoralizing. But it is what it is. Do what thou wilt, don’t what thou wilt. What thou wilt can get fucked.

She can also accept Hilda’s knowledge of it. Hilda is ridiculous but not stupid. She has eyes, and her eyes have seen where Zelda’s eyes have been.

But to have Hilda know and then tease her with it? Unbearable. To have Hilda know, give hints that she might even feel the same, but then tear up the check just as they’re pulling up to the teller’s window? Unbearable and cruel.

These thoughts have receded for the moment, replaced by the one she’s voicing now,

“I kept my end of the bargain, and now you’re keeping yours.” Zelda’s tongue is back in Hilda’s mouth, and Hilda allows it, welcomes it, caresses it. The hands Hilda had just been using to push away now pull closer and slide up to Zelda’s neck. Zelda’s rucking up the cocktail dress with one hand and circling Hilda’s waist with the other. Hilda’s running her thumbs over Zelda’s jaw and kissing her and kissing her and kissing her and thinking:

Why had she been so reticent? They could’ve been doing this delicious thing for years if she’d only followed through the first time she’d used the suggestion of it as a bargaining chip.

Zelda nips her bottom lip, and Hilda thinks maybe it’s because she’d be too jealous. If she shared herself with Zelda on a dare and Zelda went back to cavorting with whomever, Hilda wouldn’t be able to stand it. Surely that’s it. Surely she isn’t scared. But maybe she is a tad. Zelda’s fingers are making little slow circles on her inner left thigh and whimpering into her mouth.

“Ok. Hold your horses,” Hilda says. Zelda whimpers a different whimper and looks at her.

“Any and all horse-based cliches are especially heinous.” Hilda sees she’s not mad yet and has also probably accidentally made a pun, so she grins.

“I know I’m beating a dead horse,” she pauses for Zelda to roll her eyes, “but a bathroom? Where teenagers scrawl obscene graffiti and bully each other?” Zelda’s grip tightens on her waist; she presses her body closer.

“Quit dicking me around.” Hilda wants to snicker at the wording, but Zelda’s face is serious. “If I let you walk out of this washroom without having ravished you, I need you to promise me that I will later. And I need you to set a concrete time and place for that to occur.” Hilda’s eyes are very wide, and Zelda can feel her pulse racing against her where their chests touch. Zelda catches her own face in the reflection over Hilda’s shoulder, and she’s horrified to find she looks like a crazy person, all blazing eyes and taut sneer. She disentangles herself from Hilda, steps back, lights a cigarette. “I’m not going to force you, and I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. You have to stop this, though. Either fuck me or don’t, but stop pretending you might if that was never an option.”

Someone outside tries the locked door and then bangs on it, shouts:

“Hey! You can’t smoke in there! Open the door!”

“Oh get fucked. We have a special permit,” Hilda shouts back. Footsteps shuffle away. Hilda’s regular Hilda now, except so confident and sexy in that cocktail dress and three-inch black patent leather pumps. She leans over, takes the cigarette, puffs, leans back on the counter.

“Since we're being naughty schoolgirls, how do you feel about necking in the car?” Hilda says. Zelda squares her shoulders, stares.

“This is one of your classic and best tricks. You flirt me out of it! I was trying to be genuine. I’d appreciate the same from you.” Hilda douses the cigarette in the sink.

“You know, I don’t have a ton of experience in these matters, but do people who don’t want you typically kiss you the way I just did?” Zelda looks away from Hilda’s searching eyes.

“Your second best trick. Turning it back on me.”

“Fair,” Hilda says. “I’ll rephrase.” She hops off the counter and gently takes hold of Zelda’s hand. “Let’s go now and have sex in mother’s old music room. We can enchant the Hammond to play us something.” Zelda looks down at their joined hands.

“This is something you want?” Hilda kisses her, promises her with it.

xxx

The car is silent.

Zelda has both hands on the wheel, staring into the path of the headlights, the shadows the woods make with them. She can’t stop riling herself up. She’s trying to find the loophole Hilda will use once they step foot in the house. Headache? Can’t get the right stops out on the organ, better shelve the whole plan? You’ve had so many surely you can find someone else for tonight? Decided on second thought I couldn’t stand the idea of your hands on me? 

She’s just outlining some cutting replies she can make in various hypothetical scenarios, when she realizes all this time she’s been thinking, Hilda’s been inching closer on the bench seat and is now so close their thighs are touching. She swerves to avoid a raccoon. 

She swerves again when Hilda’s mouth is on her neck. She rights the car again, and Hilda is licking and then nibbling and then moving up to her ear, even as one hand is skimming nails lightly on the side of her breast and then the bottom, back to the side. It’s a very light scratching, a consistent pattern, raising goosebumps. More goosebumps at the breath in her ear, hitching now as the nails circle her nipple, which pebbles. Nails cross it, circle it, go back to the side-to-bottom pattern.

“Hilda, please.” Her voice is stern, but she doesn’t know if she has meant stop or more.

“You should park the car,” Hilda whispers.

“No.” This is a trick. She’s making it to that music room, making it to where all this has been heading.

Hilda discontinues the motions with her nails and licks Zelda’s earlobe, the shell, back down her jaw. And then Hilda’s body shifts. A hand is now on Zelda’s thigh, just resting there. There’s more shifting. And finally Zelda glances over. Hilda has pushed her skirt up, is running a finger up and down, touching herself over her underwear. Zelda swerves again.

“You should pull over,” Hilda pants.

“Why are you doing that?” Zelda says, even as she’s peering in the darkness, searching for a side road.

“I told you I wanted to neck in the car.” Hilda doesn’t stop, doesn’t speed up, but does squeeze Zelda’s thigh.

“No, you asked how I felt about necking in the car,” Zelda says.

“And now I know how you feel about it, and you know how I feel about it.” She slips her hand under the waistband. Zelda catches her wrist before she gets too far.

“I thought you were—” Zelda starts.

“Dicking you around?” Zelda takes a wild turn onto a very suspect side road, slows, wedges the big car into a barely large enough clearing, cuts the lights.

It’s still bouncing into park as Zelda pushes Hilda to scoot across the seat just enough that they can clear the steering wheel and then hauls her onto her lap. Hilda takes Zelda’s hand and guides it under her waistband, and Zelda feels the wetness there.

“Does this feel like dicking you around?” Hilda whispers. Zelda runs one finger in a line from her opening to her clit, and Hilda trembles. “I want you. And I have every time I’ve ever made this deal with you. But I was too much of a ninny to let myself go through with it.”

“It’s nice to know you’ve been dicking yourself around, too.”

“I think I’m done with that phrase now,” Hilda says.

“Oh get fucked, Hilda.”

“Please and thank you.” And before the words are finished, Zelda’s circling her clit. Hilda bucks and says, “I need to feel your skin.”

There’s a lot to be said for an amateur striptease to raspy dulcet tones. There’s also a lot to be said for having the ability to simply make clothes disappear and reappear in tidy piles in the backseat.

Hilda kisses Zelda, scrapes her nails into her scalp the same way she had reading about Rochester’s eyesight, as Zelda is tracing lines on her ribs and her slit simultaneously, in rhythm to unsung songs. Their bodies move together, dance together, sing together. Hilda begins the same pattern from before, her nails gentle and slow on Zelda’s breast. She comes to the part where, over a stiff dress, she would’ve crossed but now pinches. Zelda moans and juts her hips up. Hilda readjusts her position in her lap so that a knee is between her thighs.

“I said please and thank you, didn’t I?” Hilda husks into her ear. Zelda gets her meaning and slides two fingers in. It’s a tentative rhythm, just a brush on a cymbal, but Hilda is gyrating better than she had during the striptease, her breasts bouncing just out of reach. Zelda’s head dips, and she takes a nipple between her teeth. Hilda clenches around her fingers and thrusts herself closer. Zelda moans at the forceful contact of her knee.

And then they’re kissing again, and it’s much less measured than anything else happening. It’s a fever dream of tongues and teeth and groans and sighs and almost words. If either will be sore tomorrow, it will be that tendon on the underside of the tongue who will remind them what happened. They’re kissing this way because they haven’t talked this way. They’re kissing this way with this intensity because they should’ve been kissing this way a long time ago.

“Will you touch me?” Zelda staggers out in between.

Hilda abandons her scalp immediately.

Zelda comes first, but she comes a second time with Hilda’s knee at her center and Hilda’s fingers in her mouth.

xxx

No one asks the next morning why electric organ renditions of ‘40s ballads had played very loudly all night.

No one asks the next morning why there are again three different baked goods on offer for breakfast.

But after the kids have left, Hilda asks,

“Am I still in the red, then, love?”

Zelda lights a cigarette, hums.

“I have a very specific and detailed list of demands. Would you like me to begin chronologically, alphabetically, or in ascending or descending order according to—”

Hilda kisses her silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s a late ‘80s Crown Vic, leather seats, kept immaculately clean.


End file.
